The Heliotrope That Almost Ate the Hub
by Aviv b
Summary: Ianto's green thumb leads to unexpected results.


The Heliotrope That Almost Ate the Hub - An A-Pollen story for Tu Bishvat  
**SUMMARY: **A silly little crackfic with puns/wordplay so terrible you will groan out loud!

**Authors notes**: **Tu Bishvat **is a minor Jewish holiday observed on the fifteenth (tu) of Sh'Vat on the Hebrew calendar which is January 20th in 2011. Its often referred to as the Birthday or New Year of the trees, or Jewish Arbor Day. Since it is supposed to be a time to reflect on people's connection to their environment, I like to think of it as the first Earth Day celebration.

* * *

It started innocently enough.

Ianto and Tosh had been sent out to track a small blip that appeared on the rift predictor. As they honed in on the signal they eventually found themselves in an abandoned car lot of a shuttered factory. The asphalt was broken and weeds were sprouting out everywhere. Nothing alien caught their attention.

When they finally found the signal, it was attached to nothing more menacing than two small weeds sprouting purple flowers growing among the broken asphalt of the deserted industrial estate.

"Violets are coming through the rift?" Tosh wondered.

"Well, they aren't violets exactly," Ianto surmised. The color is right, but they look more like heliotrope to me."

Tosh shrugged. Gardening was not a hobby that she had much use for.

Ianto carefully loosened the little plants from the dirt they were growing in and carefully wrapped them in some paper towels to avoid crushing them on the way back to the Hub.

Back at the Hub, Owen scanned the plants for bacterial or viral contamination while Jack tried to ascertain if the plants were sentient in any way. After hours of examination, they concluded that the plants were harmless bits of 'junk' that the rift sometimes kicked out.

Owen was about to throw the plants out when Ianto insisted that they pot them and keep them in their hothouse. Everyone including Jack rolled their eyes. Keeping bits of flotsam and jetsam seemed to be an obsession of Ianto's. He never wanted to throw anything away except what met his definition of garbage – pizza boxes, empty Styrofoam cups and cartons that their Chinese take away came in. Jack was sure that if he went through the archives he would find numerous useless items that had come through the rift all neatly catalogued. (Space debris # 436-b – origin unknown. Appears to be a Bic pen of 1960s vintage. Ink color blue).

Still it was a harmless eccentricity, which the rest of the team tolerated with no more than an occasional teasing remark. That would be the rest of the team with the exception of Owen.

"Another piece of shite Teaboy's going to keep,' Owen mumbled as he shook his head in disgust. "Like you couldn't find nicer plants at the garden center in town."

Ianto ignored the remarks, took the plants to the hothouse and potted them in two separate containers. He wasn't sure what optimum growing conditions would be, so he put one under an artificial grow light and one under normal light.

The next day when Ianto checked on his plants he was startled to find that the one under the grow light had doubled in size while the other one hadn't changed at all. '_Interesting,' _he thought, as he moved the smaller plant under the grow light as well.

Ianto continued to monitor his plants daily and was pleased to see that they were growing well. Within a week each plant was over a foot tall and had sprouted new buds. He found himself talking to them on occasion; and sometimes he thought they were actually listening. Even he thought that was a little strange, but he didn't analyze it too closely.

The next week the rift went crazy. The team was kept on the go constantly with Weevil attacks, Hoix rioting, and dancing spiders the size of cabbages. To add to the fun a spaceship of unknown origin made an emergency landing near the bay. It took them three days of round the clock work to repair the spaceship and get the humanoid creatures (who looked shockingly like Teletubbies) safely on their way.

They finally stumbled back into the Hub and went to their work stations. Gwen was reading reports when she felt something brush against her cheek. She shrieked and jumped up as she felt something pull on her hair. She looked up and saw a long vine as thick as a climbing rope hanging down from the level above her. To her horror it had purple flowers on it.

"Ianto," she yelled. "Your plants are out of control!" One of purple buds opened up and appeared to snap at her. "Jack! These plants are trying to bite me!"

Everyone ran over to see what all the yelling was about. They stopped cold when the say the long vine dangling down. Jack ran to the hothouse and tried to open the door but it appeared to be blocked. He finally moved it a bit and could see that vines had filled the area close to bursting.

"Teaboy and his flowers," groused Owen just as one of the vines wrapped around his arm. "Oi, get off of me," he yelled. One of the purple buds, now the size of a fist opened up to reveal TEETH! Owen grabbed a scalpel and deftly cut the vine around his wrist. Once separated from the main plant, the cut section unraveled and fell off his arm. "Find yourself a snack somewhere else," he snarled.

Ianto was just coming up from the archives when he heard Tosh scream. "It's got me too!" Ianto bolted up the last steps to see Tosh enveloped by several vines. Meanwhile Jack was trying to keep the main part of the vine contained inside the hothouse. They looked up and saw that ropey vines were trying to escape under the door. Jack chopped at them with a penknife, but they were growing back quicker than he could cut them. "A little help here, someone," Jack begged, but everyone else was pretty well preoccupied trying not to get eaten by the plants.

Ianto started to panic but was frightened back to reality when he heard Myfanwy cry out. She was wrapped up in several vines that appeared to be trying to swallow her.

"Oh no you don't," Ianto growled. He ran down to the archives and grabbed the first item he thought might be useful. Up he ran at a furious pace. He just hoped he wasn't too late. He pushed Gwen away from her desk, turned on the welding torch he had found and lit the dangling end of the vine on fire. He then ran over to where Tosh was and burned through the vines carefully to free her. He then turned the torch on the end of the vine cut. The fire was slowly moving up the vines but it wasn't going to be fast enough to save Myfanwy.

Frantically he ran up to where Jack was fighting his losing battle with the vines. "On the count of three, open the hothouse door." Jack looked at him like he had lost his mind. "Just do it, it's our only chance." Jack nodded. "One, two, three!" Jack opened the door and Ianto turned the torch on fully blast. The whole hothouse went up in flames. "Help me shut the door," Jack cried. Together they managed to secure the door. It was quiet for several seconds and then the entire hothouse exploded. Plant debris flew everywhere, and the remainder of the plants, including the vine that had captured Myfanwy disintegrated.

It took several days to clean up the mess. Per usual Ianto ended up doing most of the work or so he would tell others when recalling the incident years later.

As he sat in the Merry Mildew Old Folk's Home he would regale his fellow residents with his exciting Torchwood exploits:

"Yes, I _rose_ quickly to solve the problem, _thorny_ though it was. And if Owen had just kept his _tulips_ together, I wouldn't have had to punch him out afterwards. It all _stems _from his control issues."

Did Ianto save the day? Its possible, but as his friends at Merry Mildew knew, Ianto was _prune_ to _lilac _a rug.


End file.
